A former newscaster with KNX Radio in Los Angeles was sentenced Friday to 90 days in jail for molesting a 13-year-old baby-sitter. Bruce Bernhart, 39, of Simi Valley had pleaded no contest to one count of child molestation in August. Investigators said that on June 19, Bernhart blindfolded the girl on the pretext of playing a game, then put her hand on his penis. He was arrested that evening during his broadcast at the radio station. Bernhart's attorney, Jay L.

Are the stars out tonight? "PrimeTime Live" with Sam Donaldson and Diane Sawyer on ABC gets bigger headlines, but "Saturday Night With Connie Chung" on CBS is the new prime-time news series delivering the biggest performances. Rarely have the values of news and entertainment been so artfully merged, and with such rewarding results. On a sour note, rarely has the importance that TV news attaches to its own stars been more dramatically on display as well.

They're getting to be America's most frequent flyers. Dan Rather jetted to the Soviet Union Jan. 31. Peter Jennings arrived Sunday. Tom Brokaw, after returning from Colombia on Sunday, remained in New York, but was tentatively scheduled to fly later this week to South Africa, where Ted Koppel has been since Saturday.

At 4 p.m. on June 8, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa issued a terse statement announcing that he and his wife, Corina, were separating after 20 years of marriage. Two hours later, Telemundo television anchor Mirthala Salinas delivered the story to her Spanish-language viewers on the Friday evening news. "The rumors were true," she declared of the split after an introduction that described the story as a "political scandal" that had left "many people with their mouth open."

After two months on the job, CBS anchor Katie Couric said the hardest aspect of her new post was altering the conventional evening newscast format without turning off older viewers who historically have been the program's most loyal audience. "I think the most frustrating part ... has been trying to come up with something that's new and different without alienating your core audience," Couric said during an appearance Monday night at the Museum of Television & Radio.

L.A.'s finest. That's what the Emmy Award judges ruled Saturday, naming KTTV-TV Channel 11's "Fox News at Ten" the area's best daily 60-minute newscast and KNBC-TV's "Channel 4 News at 11" tops in the daily 30-minute format. Although they represented all of 1993, the newscast awards actually were based on only one night of programming--last Nov. 16--with stations not being told in advance precisely when they would be under scrutiny by the out-of-town judges.

Sure, KNBC-TV Channel 4 and KABC-TV Channel 7 can boast of various newscasts being the ratings leaders in their time periods, but now KCBS-TV Channel 2 has something to brag about too: Emmy Awards for having the best local news, if not the most watched. And more. KCBS walked away with seven trophies at the 49th annual Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards, handed out at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium on Saturday night in recognition of excellence in local programming during 1996.

Palms sweating, black brows twitching, fingers clamped on a harsh Belomor cigarette, Vladimir Molchanov mumbled through the material he would read aloud, within minutes, for 150 million viewers of "Vremya," the nightly news program. He fiddled with his tie, put on his jacket, listened to frantic commands and questions thrown out by the staff, ran a comb through his silver-streaked hair, and emerged, poised and authoritative, on the flickering screen: Soviet television's premier gentleman.

Skeptics called it "impossible," "folly," "laughable" and "threadbare," but five years later, KCAL-TV Channel 9's three-hour, prime-time newscast--the first of its kind in the country--has defied ridicule and predictions of doom. Not only has the multimillion-dollar venture survived, it also has won more awards for excellence in broadcast journalism than any other local station and has been praised by once snickering critics.

The first time someone stuck a microphone in her hand and pushed her before a television camera, Ana Maria Canseco cried. Twenty-three years later, she's still not sure if they were tears of joy or fear. Either way, the show of emotion touched a casting director and won the cherubic Canseco a role in what would soon become one of the most popular telenovelas in Latin America.